These are the days from the end of the last season until the beginning of the next. What do you do I'm asked. Well the answer is as everyone does wherever you are and that's enjoy those things that make up your life experiences.
Living with the Setters on a day to day basis is a great joy. Attending to their needs and living as a pack fills every day. We go every where together. Yes that includes the post office and the grocery store although short trips we're a unit you see. Weather permitting we walk sometimes twice a day together then I go on my solo bike ride around the outskirts of town. In a way maybe I'm making up for time lost with previous hunting companions during busier days.
I like to ski in the winter which requires a trip back to that country. Reading books from cover to cover. Then the past two years I've taken up hybridizing day lily's which means starting seeds indoors come the end of February. It's been a great past time throughout the spring and summer as we wait once again for the days we can spend together in the field. An interest in beautiful flowers is a good companion interest to beautiful bird dog's I decided.
This small town life is unique in many ways and you have to appreciate it's advantages. The simplicity and community spirit are what keep the people who call this place home living here generation after generation. However as years go by the values and traditions of the second generation now approaching their eighties fade a little with the passing of time. These are the folks that grew up during the "Dirty Thirties"surviving on what they could garner from the harsh prairie acres of their homesteads. The third generation families who now operate the family farms and ranches are struggling in many ways with parents across the country who try to give their kids what they didn't or struggled to have growing up. This focus on material things in a technological age is evident in the behavior and attitude of the fourth generation young people. Everything is made easy for them. There is no lack of money. Their entitlement to everything life has to offer they believe is their inherent right. They are for the most part good kids but I'm afraid are being done a disservice by not being held more accountable. Grandparents shake their heads and wonder what will become of them and their children with everything so easy. They expect so much should be given to them they say when they themselves worked so hard for so little but were happy individually and as a family often times with 8 to 10 siblings. "Our life in the early days was hard but it was a good life".
While I didn't come here to raise a family I did come here to enjoy the advantages of being in bird country with my Setters. And we have had many beautiful moments in the field together. Priceless moments. Days you only have by being here. Everyday. However the noise and the culture of the third generation now running the town leaves me thinking of my next destination. I love the sounds of the town but as litter is a visual assault on the senses the noise from straight pipe illegal exhaust systems and squealing tires is audible litter or trash to my ears. Yes trash! I don't like it. But in these in between days it's become more and more evident. You see the kids are entitled to this behavior it seems. God forbid the kids be denied! While I am no stranger to life in rural areas having grown up in a small town and worked in many agricultural markets my whole career this disturbs me. So it seems specific to this particular area.
When discussing some current national events with my neighbors over the fence the other day I remarked that it was my goal in my remaining years to live where I was shielded from such nonsense. Now there are days by my definition I'm not sure I'm there!
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